Extinction Countdown

by James D. Prescott

  “I will do my best,” she said. After a moment—“I was able to briefly connect with the facility’s command center and can report it is currently running on emergency power only. Self-diagnostics reveal hull breaches in all but one of the modules.”

  “Maybe the fighting isn’t over,” Gabby speculated, gravity in her voice.

  They continued past the cave-in when Jack threw his fist in the air. Everyone stopped.

  “You see something?” Dag said, his voice a whisper.

  Jack pointed to a man crawling through the hard-packed ice. He seemed to be trying to make his way back on top, although it was hard to tell if he’d fallen through before or after the frozen boulder had punched an eight-foot hole in the ground. One thing was certain, he was wearing the same white snow gear the rest of his Israeli friends had on.

  Jack charged ahead, briefly checking the opening to ensure no one was there. When the soldier saw him, he reached for the pistol at his side, but not before Jack brought the butt of his rifle down across the side of his head, knocking him out.

  •••

  “Both of his legs are broken,” Grant said, staring at the sprig of bone pushing up against the inside of the soldier’s pant leg. The soldier came awake slowly, wincing from the pain in spite of the morphine Grant had given him.

  “Where’s the rest of your team?” Jack asked, grabbing a handful of the man’s hair and pulling his head back. He was olive-skinned with a thin face, dark hair and a prominent nose.

  Behind them, Tamura was pacing back and forth, like a hungry dog waiting for its next meal. “He’s too out of it to speak. I say we just pop him―”

  “Stand down, Lieutenant,” Mullins yelled. “You weren’t the only one who lost someone when they attacked the facility. Getting info from our enemies is standard procedure. Popping caps isn’t.”

  “You weren’t there,” she protested. “You didn’t see.”

  Jack ignored Tamura’s unusual behavior and repeated his question.

  “I do not need to tell you a thing,” the man spat.

  Leaning in, Jack pressed down lightly on his shattered right leg. The soldier howled in pain before Jack slapped his hand over the man’s mouth.

  “Hurts so much more when you can’t scream, doesn’t it? Now listen, you glib bag of shit, you killed a whole bunch of our friends. I have half a mind to leave you alone with Tamura so we can see just how much pain you can take before dying. Answer my questions and I’ll leave you these.” Jack held up two morphine auto-injectors. “Why go out screaming when you could spend your final minutes in bliss?”

  His chest heaving up and down, he reached for the injectors, but not before Jack pulled them away, handing them to Grant. “Didn’t your mother teach you to never eat your dessert before dinner?”

  The man’s head fell back against the crypt’s cold stone wall. “I entered the building in search of the other members of my team and fell through the hole.”

  “How many are there?” Mullins shouted.

  “Eleven of us descended. Four of us are dead and I am not far behind.”

  “Four?” Jack asked. “I thought we only got two of you?”

  The soldier sneered. “You did. Yair and Liam were crushed by falling ice.”

  Jack’s and the soldier’s eyes met. “What is your mission?”

  He turned away, seeming to struggle with whether or not to answer.

  “Are you working for Sentinel?”

  “Who?”

  “A bunch of assholes who hate aliens, that’s who,” Dag said, clearing up the confusion. “Are you one of them or not?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. We came because the magefah has been devastating our people. We were sent to extract any technology that might help.”

  “Magefah?” Jack repeated.

  “Magefah is the Hebrew word for plague,” Anna told them.

  The soldier regarded her with fear. “What is that thing?”

  “Her name’s Anna,” Mullins said, defensively.

  “What was your extraction plan?” Jack asked.

  “Simple. Once the Russians gained control of Northern Star, we would exit the same way we entered.”

  Eugene threw his hands into the air. “Great, now they’re working with the Russians. This keeps getting better.”

  “Was that before or after you blew the place up?” Dag asked.

  “Before,” the soldier admitted, wincing. “Once we were done, a Russian ICBM would take care of the rest.”

  “A nuke?” Gabby said, shocked.

  “Gather intel, salvage tech and then neutralize the source of the genetic mutations. That was our mission.”

  “And what about us?” Tamura said. “I guess it doesn’t matter who you kill, as long as you get what you want.”

  The soldier shook his head. “When your government discovered the spaceship near Mexico, Israel was kept out of the loop, lied to until your news media had plastered it all over the world. The United States chose to ignore her friends and allies. What were we supposed to do, sit back and leave the fate of our people in your hands?”

  “Where are the other members of your team?” Jack said, not believing the man’s earlier denials.

  The soldier shook his head and Jack grabbed the man’s leg in a firm, excruciating grip.

  That was when Tamura stopped pacing and planted her feet. “This is for my friends you killed, you son of a bitch,” she said, drawing her pistol and firing a single bullet into the soldier’s head.

  Chapter 46

  Rome

  Mia had always heard about the infamously narrow streets of Rome. Seeing them in photos was one thing. Driving through them at high speed was another altogether. Every road they turned down, it seemed, was lined on either side with an alternating sequence of cars and mopeds—what the locals called motorinos. Rather than being laid out in a grid as cities were in North America, Rome had been built in a series of concentric rings. This was an outcome of the rather organic way the city had grown and expanded over the many centuries. It was further evidence that its ancient foundations had been laid down long before the advent of modern urban planning, a reality that continued to vex architects and engineers alike. If you were on foot, intending to see the sights, that little quirk was charming and even delightful. Driving in Dr. Putelli’s Alfa Romeo, navigating streets with less than a clenched fist of space on either side, left something to be desired.

  “What’s the name of this place again?” Ollie asked, honking at three teenage boys standing in the street serenading a young girl. He rolled down his window. “Better up your game, gents. There isn’t much time left.” A hearty burst of laughter filled the car.

  “102 Viale del Campo Boario,” Mia told him. “I’m putting it into the GPS. The place is called Aventino Wellness Facility.”

  “Blah, sounds about as inviting as a lobotomy. Hardly any wonder that Putelli bloke chose to stay back.”

  Mia switched on the radio. She crossed the odd Italian music channel punctuated by long dead zones filled with static. At last she found a station in English. An announcer cheerfully informed them the Dow Jones had dropped fifteen thousand points in only the last week.

  “There goes your 401k,” Ollie joked, his eyes never leaving the impossibly narrow road. He knew if he put a single dent in this car, Putelli would very likely need his own bed at the asylum.

  Mia flipped through the files the doctor had given them on the girls. “When Tom and Sven found me in Buenos Aires,” she said, “they showed me pictures of you with your family. I must say, your wife was beautiful. So was your son.”

  Hands gripping the steering wheel, Ollie remained quiet.

  “I understand you don’t owe me anything, but it would have been nice to know all the same.”

  “I’m not sure where your friends got their information, but she wasn’t my wife,” he told her, his voice betraying more than a hint of strain. “And I’m sorry to say the little one wasn’t mine either.
”

  “She was a girlfriend?”

  “Aye.”

  “It’s none of my business, anyway,” Mia said, adjusting the knob on the radio.

  “Maybe not. It just happens to be a story I’d hoped I would never have to tell anyone, let alone you.”

  The expression on Mia’s face changed. “Did she betray you?”

  “Oh, yeah, but probably not in the way you’re thinking. You see, I got involved with a married woman. At least, she was technically still married. Amy and her bloke, Lance, were separated and living apart. He took the condo in downtown Sydney and she stayed at the house in the suburbs. I met Amy at the petrol station, of all places. She was at the pump, trying to get her credit card working. Turned out she was running a little tight because her prick of an ex was withholding alimony payments. Something about that pretty face of hers and a Sheila in need of help just tweaked me the wrong way.”

  “You’re a sucker for an underdog,” Mia said, fighting the sting of jealousy.

  “You can say that again. How do you think I ended up here with you? Anyway, with Amy, one thing led to another and the two of us started dating. I became a surrogate husband and father overnight. For the first time in my life I felt like I had finally found my place in the world. Soon enough, I started hearing about the abuse. Amy would come back from a joint visitation with bruises on her wrists. It was nothing, she’d say. Lance just got angry when she brought up the money. This went on for a close to a month and the whole time I was doing all I could to bite my lip and fight the urge to head over there and beat the little puke to a pulp. She begged me not to. Made me swear no matter what I wouldn’t hit him, that it would only complicate the custody hearing.

  “When she showed up with a black eye, that was when I lost my shit. Old Lance didn’t know I was a connected man. Maybe not mob connected, but Sentinel’s reach runs far deeper than any organized crime ring. But you see, I’m not the type to send others to do my dirty work. So I did it myself. Mostly just to scare him. Showed up at his fancy oceanfront apartment and when he opened the door I clocked him one. Sent him straight on his arse.

  “I was only gonna hit him a couple more times, leave him with a taste of what I’d do to him if he ever touched her again. Before I could, he scrambled to his feet and ran into the kitchen. Came back with a twelve-inch butcher knife pointed down like he intended to jam it into the top of my skull. Anyway, that’s when I shot him. Two in the chest and one in the head, just like I’d been taught.” He tapped his chest and forehead with the tip of his index finger.

  Mia’s hand had crept up and over her mouth in shock. “Oh, no, Ollie. Please tell me you’re making this up.”

  He glanced away and the look on his face said one thing and one thing only.

  I don’t make stuff up.

  “Were you arrested?”

  Ollie shook his head. “No, but it meant Sentinel could dig their claws even deeper into me. They had kompromat, as the Ruskies like to say. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Sure enough the cops investigated and discovered on the days Amy said Lance had abused her, he’d been at work. The guy was an investment banker in meetings all day with about three dozen witnesses to prove it. Turned out she’d been shopping for a hitman for months before she finally settled on a washed-out sucker named Ollie Cooper.”

  Mia put a hand on his forearm. She remained quiet for a bit, digesting what he’d just told her. Then she said, “What you did was wrong, but I know your heart was in the right place.”

  “I tend to wear that heart of mine on the end of my sleeve instead of where it belongs. And every so often someone spots it hanging out there and plunges a dagger straight through it.”

  •••

  The residue of Ollie’s ghastly story was still clinging to Mia by the time they reached the Aventino facility. The building ran the length of the street and resembled the kind of stark, unimaginative architecture more at home in Soviet-era Poland. Once inside, the interior did little to dispel Mia’s initial impression. The floors were polished granite sprinkled with black and gold specks. A mint-green receptionist’s desk loomed before them. Behind it sat a man with a pencil-thin mustache.

  “We’re here on behalf of Dr. Putelli from Saint Andrea Hospital,” Mia said.

  “ID’s or passports, please,” the man said in broken English.

  They handed them over and the man checked them before handing them back. His eyes fell to a scrap of paper with some scribbled notes before saying, “You are here to see Sofia and Noemi Oneto, is that correct?”

  “We are.”

  “No problem. Please sign here, here and here.”

  Ollie sighed. “Would you like my blood type and astrological sign while we’re at it?”

  The man glanced up, humorless. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ignore my friend,” Mia said, digging her elbow into Ollie’s ribs. “He’s just cranky because of the traffic.”

  The man offered a lame smile before leading them to the elevators.

  “Exit at the fifth floor, turn right and keep going until you reach the head nurse’s station. Dr. Felli will meet you there.”

  They did as they were told, Mia suddenly feeling that maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea after all. When the elevator doors opened onto the fifth floor, they entered a darkened corridor, quiet except for the periodic shriek of a distant voice crying out in Italian.

  They came to the nurse’s desk and the beautiful brunette leaning against it. “Buongiorno, I’m Dr. Felli,” she said, struggling but perfectly able to make herself understood in English. “I’m the head psychiatrist here at Aventino. I understand you’ve come to see Sofia and Noemi.”

  “That’s right,” Mia said. She took a moment to explain what they were looking for.

  “You understand, their evaluations have begun, but are not yet complete.”

  “I do. Is there anything you can tell us about their condition?” Mia asked.

  “What my colleague means to ask is: in your professional opinion, have both those girls gone nuts or what?”

  Dr. Felli’s sculpted eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “Dr. Putelli told us the girls had suffered from a psychotic break with reality,” Mia explained. “And we’re trying to understand what might have caused it.”

  “I see,” Felli said, relieved. “Both girls appear to be suffering from schizophrenia. So far, I believe the most pronounced symptom is that they claim to be hearing voices.”

  “Voices,” Mia repeated. “Have they mentioned what the voices are saying?”

  “I’m afraid not. Again, their evaluation has only just begun.”

  “Can we see them?”

  Dr. Felli seemed to consider this for a long moment. “Yes, but only if we make it brief. And please limit your questions as they speak very little English.”

  She led them down a long corridor. On the right were several doors with glass portholes.

  Dr. Felli stopped and motioned through one of the windows to a young girl sitting before a table. “This is Sofia,” she said. The girl had pale skin and delicate features only partly obscured by her long black hair. Sitting next to her was a graduate student attempting to engage her.

  They entered and the girl looked up, only mildly interested.

  “Hello, my name is Mia,” Mia said, thinking at once of Zoey and fighting hard to leave those overpowering emotions back where they belonged. Sofia’s tiny hand went around and around in giant, meaningless circles. “Do you like drawing?”

  “We encourage them to draw in order to express how they’re feeling.”

  Ollie’s gaze shifted back to the giant loops Sofia was doodling. “Looks to me like the young lass thinks she’s getting the runaround.”

  Mia faked a laugh. “I’m afraid Dr. Cooper has been moonlighting as a comedian.”

  Ollie grinned and shrugged as if to say, You got me.

  “Does she speak?” Mia asked, taking a knee beside Sofia.

  “They’ve
hardly said a word since arriving,” Dr. Felli admitted. “We’ve done everything we can to make them comfortable.”

  “What are you drawing?” Mia asked, running her hand down the girl’s long jet-black hair. She couldn’t help thinking about her Zoey and the feeling left a burning ember in the middle of her belly. Sofia stopped and smiled up at her before returning to her circles.

  “Maybe we should give Sofia some space,” Dr. Felli suggested, ushering them out of the room and closing the door. She led them four doors down and paused before opening it. “I think you’ll find Noemi isn’t nearly as shy.”

  They entered to find the second twin also sitting at a table drawing, a minder next to her. Noemi had pale skin and fine features, much like her sister, but her black hair was short and scraggly.

  Once again, Mia knelt down to introduce herself, but this time she froze when she saw what was on the scrap paper before her. In a child’s hand it read:

  hello my name is mia

  She stood back up, a chill racing up her arms. Now Ollie and Dr. Felli noticed it too, both of them looking on in puzzled astonishment.

  “Could she have heard us?” Mia asked.

  Dr. Felli shook her head and then nodded. “I don’t know.”

  Ollie searched around for a vent connecting the cells.

  “Noemi,” Mia asked, “did you hear us speaking with your sister just now?”

  The young girl shook her head. “I saw the words and wrote them.”

  The four adults exchanged glances.

  “Were you able to hear us when we were in with Sofia?” Mia asked the psych student sitting next to her.

  “Not that I noticed, but I was busy asking Noemi questions of my own.”

  Mia turned to Dr. Felli. “Would you mind if Ollie went into Sofia’s room, just to see if we can hear him from there?”

  Dr. Felli’s gaze kept dropping to the scrap paper. “Uh, yes, of course. I’ll bring him over myself.”

  They closed the door behind them while Mia, Noemi and the grad student stayed behind. Mia strained to listen for any signs of Ollie’s voice. A few moments passed before she asked the student if she’d heard anything. Looking worried now, the young woman shook her head.